scholarly journals Lessons Learned From Cases of COVID-19 Infection in South Korea

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Yun-Jung Kang
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Personal Hygiene ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Infected Case ◽  
Large Groups

ABSTRACT On December 31, 2019, the Chinese government officially announced that the country had a single pneumonia case with an unknown cause. In the weeks after, South Korea had 24 confirmed cases by February 8, and the number has increased steadily since then. The highly contagious virus known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infected Case No. 31 in Daegu; she was the first patient related to Sincheonji Church. Later, the number of cases involved with Sincheonji skyrocketed. On March 6, 2020, the number of confirmed cases was 6284, with 42 dead. This study, through collecting epidemiological data about various COVID-19 infection cases, discovered that getting together in large groups leads to mass infection, and that paying close attention to personal hygiene by means of wearing masks, sanitary gloves, etc., can prevent the spread of COVID-19. Additional epidemiological data and related studies on COVID-19 infections in South Korea are likely to support or slightly modify this conclusion. However, this study is significant in that it emphasizes the precautionary principle in preventing and managing infectious diseases, and has a suggestion for public health policies, which are currently in high demand.

scholarly journals Investigation on COVID-19 Infection Cases in Korea

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun Jung Kang
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Personal Hygiene ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Patient Case ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Pneumonia Case ◽  
Large Groups

Abstract On December 31st, 2019, the Chinese government announced officially that the country had a pneumonia case with an unknown cause. After that, Korea had 24 confirmed cases on February 8th, and the number has increased constantly since then. COVID-19, a highly contagious virus, infected another patient, Case No. 31, in Daegu; she was the first patient related to Sincheonji Church in Daegu. Later, the number of cases involved with Sincheonji skyrocketed. On March 6th, 2020, the accumulated number of confirmed cases was 6,284, with 42 dead among them. This study, through collecting epidemiological data about various COVID-19 infection cases, found out that getting together in large groups and religious ceremonies leads to massive infection, and that paying close attention to personal hygiene by wearing masks and sanitary gloves, etc., can prevent the spread of COVID-19. Additional epidemiological data and related studies on COVID-19 infections in Korea might either support or modify this conclusion. However, this study is significant in that it emphasizes the precautionary principle in preventing and managing infectious diseases, and that it has a suggestion for public health policies which are on urgent demand currently.

scholarly journals Experiences and Lessons Learned from COVID-19 Pandemic Management in South Korea and the V4 Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Gergő Túri ◽  
Attila Virág
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Health System ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
Communicable Disease ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Public Health Policies

In the first year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korea suffered significantly less social and economic damage than the V4 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) despite less stringent restrictive measures. In order to explore the causes of the phenomenon, we examined the public health policies and pandemic management of South Korea and the V4 countries and the social and economic outcomes of the measures. We identified the key factors that contributed to successful public health policies and pandemic management in South Korea by reviewing the international literature. Based on the analysis results, South Korea successfully managed the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to the appropriate combination of non-pharmaceutical measures and its advanced public health system. An important lesson for the V4 countries is that successful pandemic management requires a well-functioning surveillance system, a comprehensive testing strategy, an innovative contact tracing system, transparent government communication, and a coordinated public health system. In addition, to develop pandemic management capabilities and capacities in the V4 countries, continuous training of public health human resources, support for knowledge exchange, encouragement of research on communicable disease management, and collaboration with for-profit and non-governmental organizations are recommended.

scholarly journals Forecasting the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons learned and future directions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saketh Sundar ◽  
Patrick Schwab ◽  
Jade Z.H. Tan ◽  
Santiago Romero-Brufau ◽  
Leo Anthony Celi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Resource ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Mechanistic Models ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Control And Prevention

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has demonstrated that accurate forecasts of infection and mortality rates are essential for informing healthcare resource allocation, designing countermeasures, implementing public health policies, and increasing public awareness. However, there exists a multitude of modeling methodologies, and their relative performances in accurately forecasting pandemic dynamics are not currently comprehensively understood. In this paper, we introduce the non-mechanistic MIT-LCP forecasting model, and assess and compare its performance to various mechanistic and non-mechanistic models that have been proposed for forecasting COVID-19 dynamics. We performed a comprehensive experimental evaluation which covered the time period of November 2020 to April 2021, in order to determine the relative performances of MIT-LCP and seven other forecasting models from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Forecast Hub. Our results show that there exist forecasting scenarios well-suited to both mechanistic and non-mechanistic models, with mechanistic models being particularly performant for forecasts that are further in the future when recent data may not be as informative, and non-mechanistic models being more effective with shorter prediction horizons when recent representative data is available. Improving our understanding of which forecasting approaches are more reliable, and in which forecasting scenarios, can assist effective pandemic preparation and management.

The impact of COVID-19 on the Chinese tourism industry

2021 ◽  
pp. 135481662110412
Author(s):  
Can Wang ◽  
Xianming Meng ◽  
Mahinda Siriwardana ◽  
Tien Pham
Keyword(s):  
Negative Impact ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the world hard, costing more than three and half million lives. Governments around the globe are not in a consensus position on the most appropriate response to the pandemic. This study utilizes an economic model to assess choices and compare outcome of public health policies using China as a case study. A lax policy could have costed the country up to 97% of inbound tourism revenue; reduced real gross domestic product by 11% and decreased employment by 15%. Analysis shows that the appropriate prevention and control policy of the Chinese Government have mitigated the impact of COVID-19 significantly for both tourism and non-tourism sectors. Importantly, the article highlights that the substantial negative impact on investment in tourism will slow down the sector’s recovery. The article calls for strong tourism-focused response policies for a speedy recovery.

scholarly journals Public Health Policies and Global COVID-19 Outbreak

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Komaroff ◽  
A A Belhouchet
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
P Value ◽  
Public Health Interventions ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
The Usa

Abstract Background Was the world prepared to face the pandemic with a standard strategy? Objectives To evaluate the association between public health interventions against the COVID-19 outbreak and the outcome. Methods The observational study included data on incidence of confirmed COVID-19 cases (outcome) and public health non-pharmaceutical interventions (exposure) from five countries: France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the USA, December 31, 2019 through April 12, 2020. The public health measures were grouped into five categories: lockdown, movement restrictions, public health measures, social (including social distancing) and economic measures, and use of facial mask. The multiple linear regressions were utilized to test the hypothesis that implementation of some public health measures was associated with the change in the incident number of COVID-19 cases, 2-sided, α = 0.05. Results The incidence of COVID-19 would be significantly greater without lockdown (1.89 times, p-value <.0001), public health and economic measures (25.17, p-value <.0001), and using masks (11.93, p-value=0.002), assuming that all other public health policies are the same. The effectiveness increases with earlier time of implementation. Among considered countries, South Korea was the most efficacious, where all measures were statistically significantly efficacious (p-value <0.05). Conclusions The findings demonstrate an association between public health measures and the outcome. The experience from South Korea should be studied further as the most effective non-pharmacological approach to fight the disease. This paper is the first step to develop the standardized approach utilizing the public health interventions to be applied effectively to the globe population. Key messages the most effective measures to control the COVID-19, and future outbreaks. The effect of particular measure varied by country and time of implementation.

scholarly journals Extending statistical models for source attribution of zoonotic diseases: a study of campylobacteriosis

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (150) ◽  
pp. 20180534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sih-Jing Liao ◽  
Jonathan Marshall ◽  
Martin L. Hazelton ◽  
Nigel P. French
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Data ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Zoonotic Diseases ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Source Attribution ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Source Of Infection ◽  
Free Model ◽  
Transmission Pathways

Preventing and controlling zoonoses through the design and implementation of public health policies requires a thorough understanding of transmission pathways. Modelling jointly the epidemiological data and genetic information of microbial isolates derived from cases provides a methodology for tracing back the source of infection. In this paper, the attribution probability for human cases of campylobacteriosis for each source, conditional on the extent to which each case resides in a rural compared to urban environment, is estimated. A model that incorporates genetic data and evolutionary processes is applied alongside a newly developed genetic-free model. We show that inference from each model is comparable except for rare microbial genotypes. Further, the effect of ‘rurality’ may be modelled linearly on the logit scale, with increasing rurality leading to the increasing likelihood of ruminant-sourced campylobacteriosis.

scholarly journals Revealing the influence of national public health policies for the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Wuhan, China through status dynamic modeling

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianyi Qiu ◽  
Han Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Wuhan City ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Infected People ◽  
End Point ◽  
National Public Health

SummaryBackgroundThe epidemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 was first reported in Wuhan, China, and now is spreading worldwide. The Chinese government responded to this epidemic with multiple public health policies including locking down the city of Wuhan, establishing multiple temporary hospitals, and prohibiting public gathering events. Here, we constructed a new real-time status dynamic model of SEIO (MH) to reveal the influence of national public health policies and to model the epidemic in Wuhan.MethodsA real-time status dynamic model was proposed to model the population of Wuhan in status Susceptible (S), Exposed (E), Infected with symptoms (I), with Medical care (M), and Out of the system (O) daily. Model parameters were fitted according to the daily report of new infections from Jan. 27th, 2020 to Feb. 2nd, 2020. Using the fitted parameters, the epidemic under different conditions was simulated and compared with the current situation.FindingAccording to our study, the first patient is most likely appeared on Nov. 29th, 2019. There had already been 4,153 infected people and 6,536 exposed ones with the basic reproduction number R0 of 2.65 before lockdown, whereas R0 dropped to 1.98 for the first 30 days after the lockdown. The peak point is Feb. 17th, 2020 with 24,115 infected people and the end point is Jun. 17th, 2020. In total, 77,453 people will be infected. If lockdown imposed 7 days earlier, the total number of infected people would be 21,508, while delaying the lockdown by 1-6 days would expand the infection scale 1.23 to 4.94 times. A delay for 7 days would make the epidemic finally out of control. Doubling the number of beds in hospitals would decrease the total infections by 28%, and further investment in bed numbers would yield a diminishing return. Last, public gathering events that increased the transmission parameter by 5% in one single day would increase 4,243 infected people eventually.InterpretationOur model forecasted that the peak time in Wuhan was Feb. 17th, 2020 and the epidemic in Wuhan is now under control. The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 is currently a global public health threat for all nations. Multiple countries including South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy, and the United States are suffering from SARS-CoV-2. Our study, which simulated the epidemic in Wuhan, the first city in the world fighting against SARS-CoV-2, may provide useful guidance for other countries in dealing with similar situations.FundingNational Natural Science Foundation of China (31900483) and Shanghai Sailing program (19YF1441100).Research in contextEvidence before this studyThe epidemic of SARS-CoV-2 has been currently believed to started from Wuhan, China. The Chinese government started to report the data including infected, cured and dead since Jan 20th, 2020. We searched PubMed and preprint archives for articles published up to Feb 28th, 2020, which contained information about the Wuhan outbreak using the terms of “SARS-CoV-2”, “2019-nCoV”, “COVID-19”, “public health policies”, “coronavirus”, “CoV”, “Wuhan”, “transmission model”, etc. And a number of articles were found to forecast the early dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and clinical characteristics of COVID-19. Several of them mentioned the influence of city lockdown, whereas lacked research focused on revealing the impact of public health policies for the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 through modeling study.Added value of this studyAs the first study systemically analysis the effect of three major public health policies including 1) lockdown of Wuhan City, 2) construction of temporary hospitals and 3) reduction of crowed gathering events in Wuhan city. The results demonstrated the epidemic in Wuhan from the potential first patient to the end point as well as the influence of public health policies are expected to provide useful guidance for other countries in fighting against the epidemic of SRAS-CoV-2.Implications of all the available evidenceAvailable evidence illustrated the human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2, in which the migration of people in China during the epidemic may quickly spread the epidemic to the rest of the nation. These findings also suggested that the lockdown of Wuhan city may slow down the spread of the epidemic in the rest of China.

scholarly journals Effects of the COVID-19 Outbreak on Elder Mistreatment and Response in New York City: Initial Lessons

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 690-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Elman ◽  
Risa Breckman ◽  
Sunday Clark ◽  
Elaine Gottesman ◽  
Lisa Rachmuth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Elder Mistreatment ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
The Impact

New York City is currently experiencing an outbreak of COVID-19, a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus, which is particularly dangerous for older adults. This pandemic has led to public health policies including social distancing and stay-at-home orders. We explore here the impact of this unique crisis on victims of elder mistreatment and people at risk of victimization. The COVID-19 outbreak has also had a profound impact on the organizations from many sectors that typically respond to protect and serve victims of elder mistreatment. We examine this impact and describe creative solutions developed by these organizations and initial lessons learned in New York City to help inform other communities facing this pandemic and provide guidance for future crises.

scholarly journals Epidemiological observations on breaking COVID-19 transmission: from the experience of Taiwan

2021 ◽  
pp. jech-2020-216240
Author(s):  
Iona MacDonald ◽  
Jye-Lin Hsu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Minimal Impact ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Government ◽  
Effective Public Health ◽  
Ongoing Monitoring

With almost no community-transmitted cases and without any complete lockdown throughout 2020, Taiwan is one of very few countries worldwide that has recorded minimal impact from the COVID-19 pandemic attack. This is despite being only 130 km from China and having frequent business communications with that country, where COVID-19 first emerged. At the end of December 2020, Taiwan had recorded just 873 cases and 7 deaths, in a country of around 24 million people. How to determine the effectiveness of public health policies is an important issue that must be resolved, especially in those countries that have experienced few cases of community-transmitted COVID-19. Our analysis of epidemiological data in Taiwan relating to influenza-like illness (ILI), enterovirus and diarrhoea from the past 3 years reveals dramatic reductions in the incidence of ILI and enterovirus in 2020, compared with 2018 and 2019. These reductions occurred within 2 weeks of the government issuing public health policies for COVID-19 and indicate that such policies can effectively reduce infectious diseases overall. In contrast, no such reduction in ILI activity was observed in 2020 after the first COVID-19 case was reported in the USA. We suggest that infectious diseases data can be used to inform effective public health policies needed to break the transmission chain of COVID-19 and that ongoing monitoring of infectious diseases data can provide confidence about nationwide health.

scholarly journals Analysis of the impact of lockdown on the reproduction number of the SARS-Cov-2 in Spain

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Hyafil ◽  
David Moriña
Keyword(s):  
Reproduction Number ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Basic Reproduction Ratio ◽  
Reproduction Ratio ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Slowing Down ◽  
Speed Of Propagation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Viral Outbreak

AbstractObjectiveThe late 2019 Covid-19 disease outbreak has put the health systems of many countries to the limit of their capacity. The most affected European countries are, so far, Italy and Spain. In both countries (and others), the authorities decreed a lockdown, with local specificities. The objective of this work is to evaluate the impact of the measures undertaken in Spain to deal with the pandemic.MethodWe estimated the number of cases and the impact of lockdown on the reproducibility number based on the hospitalization reports up to April 15th 2020.ResultsThe estimated number of cases shows a sharp increase until the lockdown, followed by a slowing down and then a decrease after full quarantine was implemented. Differences in the basic reproduction ratio are also very significant, dropping from de 5.89 (95% CI: 5.46-7.09) before the lockdown to 0.48 (95% CI: 0.15-1.17) afterwards.ConclusionsHandling a pandemic like Covid-19 is very complex and requires quick decision making. The large differences found in the speed of propagation of the disease show us that being able to implement interventions at the earliest stage is crucial to minimise the impact of a potential infectious threat. Our work also stresses the importance of reliable up to date epidemiological data in order to accurately assess the impact of Public Health policies on viral outbreak.

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